I learned a lot from a lot of trying to think about nothing...

A lot of what I learned I actually already knew, like how good meditating is for me and that I need to keep up with it regardless of whatever my life situation is, especially when it's a tough situation.  

I feel extremely grounded now and because my silence was only half-time (I still talked to my clients at work, people at the grocery store, and with people involved with graduate school admissions), I feel like I will be able to transition this into everyday life smoothly.

I would like to write a great deal more about the things that I learned during the past week, however I can't seem to put them into words & find that using more words would take away from the point.

I do want to mention a mantra I use frequently during meditation however, because it is awesome.

Very early in the week, probably my second or third time sitting I was having an extremely difficult time concentrating (as I did the times before this one), and finally I realized that I needed a mantra to help me focus.  I began asking for a mantra and searching through memories of yoga classes, the monastery, and books I've read to try and find one that I could use.  I've heard and used many mantras before, however, none came to mind and just as I was getting especially frustrated "Sat Nam" came into my head.  The funny thing is, I don't remember ever hearing this mantra before, I had no clue what it meant, but for some reason it stuck in my head.  I started repeating it, but then got a little worried about not knowing what I was saying, what if I was repeating something negative and not knowing it?  I tried to clear the mantra from my mind, but it kept popping back up.  

Later I searched the internet for the meaning of Sat Nam, and found that's actually a commonly used mantra, meaning "I am truth" or "truth is my essence," and that I was actually pronouncing it correctly in my mind.  I took this as a sign that I should use this phrase frequently in mediation and proceeded to do so.  

I've noticed some incredible things while using this mantra.  First off, it's a little bit different each time I use it, as each mediation is always a little bit (or a lot) different from the last, the mantra works the same way.  One thing that it usually does though, is it activates energy flowing up through my spine, when I inhale and think "Sat" it pulls energy up to the crown of my head, and then with the exhale "Nam" it either pours the energy down the front of my chest back into my spine, or it pours the energy all over my body with an umbrella-type effect.  There's always a rhythm to this and it often feels like ocean waves going through me and at the same time I am the ocean waves.  That sensation is incredible.  Also, sometimes it will concentrate the energy down at my root chakra, which is intense and grounding.

During one meditation I began to feel a strange itchy-burning sensation in the middle of my forehead, at my third eye.  This was fine until it started to feel like there were bugs burrowing into my head and I began to wonder if there really was something chiseling away at my forehead.  It was driving me crazy, but for some reason I didn't move and just thought to myself "well, if there is a bug digging there, at least it's right on my third eye and it'll leave a cool mark that I can tell an interesting story about" (which really doesn't match with the "non-ego" of meditation, but oh well).  Regardless, I found there were no bugs and the sensation lessened to a mild buzzing.  This buzzing/spinning sensation in my forehead has been with me on and off for about three days now & I've come to the conclusion that it's my sixth chakra opening up a bit-which is exciting & tends to happen sometimes when working profusely on the first chakra.  

Also while sitting & focusing on this mantra, sometimes I'll see flashes of dark purple behind my eyelids while my eyes are closed.  Sometimes the flashes stick around and form blobs of color that float or change shape.  One time they just kept getting bigger and bigger until I felt surrounded by them, and surrounded by a presence.  It was slightly overwhelming, so I said "hello" out loud, which was interesting.

So, enough about Sat Nam, it's awesome, and I will continue to meditate frequently.  I'm very grateful for my past week's experiences.  I also want to take this moment to recognize that I have unbelievably incredible friends.  Not very many people can call up their friends and say "hello, I'm about to go into silence, so I won't be talking to you for I don't know how long" and have their friends happily say "ok" and then support them through it.  So thank you to all my wonderful friends, I feel very loved, and below is a T-shirt for you:

Can we move on yet?

Uh, no, not really.  So, getting to the second chakra has been a lot harder than I thought it would be.  This is partly because I know I have so much to work on in the second chakra & so I've been thinking about how I would begin to examine it in a short month's time.  Of course this means I never actually starting to work on it.  The delay also has to do with the fact that I still need to work on my first chakra.  A number of things happened in the past few months that stirred up my life and made me much less grounded than I normally am.

I must admit, I think I did an excellent job working on the root chakra during the month of August, however a number of things have changed since then.  The major change is my living situation, or lack of a place to live all together.  This is a good thing however, because the energy of my past living situation turned awful.  Once your living situation gets uncomfortable  it's extremely hard to remain grounded, as that's one of the key ingredients to grounding--- your space & how comfortable you are in it.  I also found that I wasn't meditating because I couldn't stand to be in that space.  Therefore, I noticed myself becoming very ungrounded and made the change to move out-which is much much better than staying there, no matter what the future circumstances are.  The only problem is that I didn't have a place to go, yes I have a number of friends that I can stay with, however, having your own space and not having to move around a great deal is very important for grounding (unless you're on vacation of course).

A number of other things happened during this time (including not being able to find work), however everything is starting to come together now, which is lovely.  I still feel very scattered though, and find the state that I'm in now fascinating because I never would have predicted it, or imagined myself like this.  It's an excellent learning experience, and now I'm going about "fixing" everything & going back to my first chakra for the month of January- or at least the first part of the month of January, who knows how long it will be, I've learned that you can't put a time frame on these things.  (I must admit also though, that I am disappointed in myself for letting it get like this, not the circumstances I came across, but stopping the meditation and self-discovery.  I do however, realize that it's all a learning experience, which is why I'm taking these actions now.)

In order to get my grounding back and figure out what on earth is going on, I'm going to take a few moments to put some things back in order.  First off, I'll be meditating regularly twice a day, everyday (which I've already started and it is wonderful).  I'm also going to do a cleanse for my body, and go into silence (except at work) for my mind/emotions.  We'll start with that and I'll go from there...

I've discovered that I'm not bad at making huge changes to my life.  I have no problem moving out of my house without having a definite place to live, not eating solid food for 21 days, going to a Zen Monastery and not talking and meditating for hours for a month.  However, when it comes to little things, I'm a total wuss.  I find it very difficult to modify my diet slightly, make the time to meditate everyday for just 10 minutes, stop talking to someone I love for just one day, maybe even just that afternoon, etc.  So I guess one of my main goals at the moment is to try and incorporate doing "little things" (which aren't really that little, because they're much much harder to do than the big things) into my regular life.

I came to realize that I often crave going on retreats where I can be alone and figure stuff out, outside of my normal life.  There were times when I was in college when I would just drive to a hotel and stay there for the night or a weekend, just so I could have this sort of "away from everything" time.  I've been wanting to go to India a lot recently to figure things out, and yes, I really want to do this sometime soon, however I came to a realization the other day that a lot of the time recently (and other times when I'm stressed) I just want to run off to a spiritual retreat of sorts and sort things out before I come back to real life.  I get terribly jealous when I hear or read about people that are studying in Ashrams, going on journeys all over the world, and even those that are just doing a weekend solo camping trip.  For me, this retreat would be optimal to do in an Ashram where there were set times for me to eat, sleep, meditate, do yoga, and clean-that way I wouldn't have to think of this everyday life stuff then.  Yes, I'm sure I would have many awesome realizations and come to know myself better.  The time I spent at the Monastery in Vancouver was by far one of the most spiritually, emotionally, mentally & physically impactful times of my life.  It changed my life completely, mainly because I learned to meditate there and it changed my thinking.  Quite frankly I never would have been able to figure out the things I'm writing about in this blog post today if I hadn't done that.

However, the thing I realized is that I'm already here.  I don't need to go anywhere, I shouldn't go anywhere.  I need to learn to practice meditation in everyday life.  I need to be able to incorporate my spiritual practice into everyday life and not ignore my blog about my own self-discovery for 3 months.  I need to be able to make little changes and find peace in everything everyday.  That's what we meditate for anyway.  I am here right now and this is when I need to do this-not once I'm settled into a new place to live, or when I know which grad school I'm going to, or when I have a better job-right now is when I need this stuff the most.

So, yes, I'm still going to do the cleansing/meditating for long hours/silent period of time right now to start it off.  The cleansing won't be extreme, the meditating will start out more extreme than it will end up in the future, but it will be here regardless of who's house I'm staying at, the silence will not be total silence-I will still have to go to work and talk to clients as well as take care of school and apartment-hunting tasks.  So I will modify my "retreat" that I'm craving so much to fit in the space I'm in right now-I don't need to run away.  I do feel I need the short "retreat"-then I will slowly begin to start talking more, and meditating less (it will still be everyday, because I know I need that), and my cleanse will be over.  This will transition me into my new everyday "simple" habits, without me leaving my life stuff behind, even during my "retreat."

So that's the plan.

  

First chakra continuing education

The only way to make a permanent shift in your chakras is to practice working with them. When you do a chakra exercise it can bring you an experience & a temporary change, but in order to change your life and your functioning a little more is required. Things you can do to balance your first chakra on a regular basis aren't hard and some of them are actually pretty fun.

There are tons of grounding/first chakra exercises you can do, such as simply reading about it, doing a cleanse, going outside and lying on the ground, visualization exercises, cleaning your house, and pretty much anything that puts you in your body (feeling that you are present & feeling what your body feels like in the moment).

For me, some of the continuing practices I'm doing include:

• Mediation -meditation practice is one of the most fundamental grounding exercises, also all your other chakras gain energy from meditation so it's a great thing to continue (and also I think the most important grounding exercise, if I had to just pick one, this would be it) -meditation brings presence into your day all day long
• Getting a bike and biking everywhere possible -this brings you closer to the environment, puts you in your body & makes you healthier, and makes you have to know where you're going
• Avoiding using TomTom (my GPS system) as much as possible- it helps me know the area I live in and be present
• Learning more about Portland & current events (local, environmental, political)
• Yoga
• Exercising
  
• Listening to my body
  
• Cooking delicious new meals
• Being outside (going new places to hike/hiking alone)
• Practicing presence (focusing on the person talking, when you eat you should be eating, not doing something else in addition to that, when you drive you should be driving, not paying attention to the cd you're listening to or a person on the cell phone-just giving all your attention to what you're doing at that moment)
• Energetic grounding exercises (setting up energetic boundaries between me and the other people I'm around, not being effected by their state of mind, not taking on negative emotions or pain from people I give massages to-I personally send energy down through my feet to ground myself, sometimes I picture tree roots going into the earth, sometimes I picture/feel the color red, sometimes I surround myself with a white energy "egg" that keeps me separate, sometimes I pray for help with it, sometimes I visualize an anchor going down into the ground, sometimes I just think of my first chakra and it activates it---everyone does something different, play around with different things and see what works for you, lots of people use their breath)
• Being aware of your misconceptions and working through them

Building up your first chakra helps with growth in all your other chakras, it's an important place to start. Strengthening your root chakra will give you a greater sense of presence, get you to notice little things in the moment, help you accomplish more on the physical plane, and will help you manifest what you want. (Be careful with the manifestation thing though, when you're really grounded you start to manifest what you think about the most, so be sure that you're thinking of things you would like to happen, rather than worrying about things you wouldn't.) You will also discover that you're a lot happier everyday when you're present and grounded, you start to enjoy life a lot more and get happy for no reason what so ever.

Misconceptions

Everyone is born into a family, or tribal system that raises them. Your family raises you to the best of their ability, which includes what they believe is best for you, and emerges you in their value/belief systems before you even know how to talk. This includes superstitions, misconceptions, and expectations that many people don't question if they even agree with before they go about living their lives by these rules and in many cases passing them onto their children as well.

Your first chakra and how you live your life is effected by this, so it's a good idea to take a look at what misconceptions you were brought up with. You may be spending a lot of time stressing over something that you don't believe to be true, yet you were raised this way and it may even be causing you a great deal of anxiety, possibly limiting your potential.

As far as superstitions go for me, I can't really think of any right now that I would like to work on. I remember I used to not step on cracks sometimes on the way to the bus stop when I was younger, but it was more of a hopping game than a "my mom's back might break" game.I do, however, have plenty of misconceptions to work out.

• I always used to think I should be married by the time I was a certain age (this age started out as 25, then was 28 or so, then was 30) or I was going to be alone forever. This fear made me depressed sometimes, and also kept me from being single most of the time. I don't regret any of the relationships I was in and feel like I learned a lot from them, however, I think it would have been a great learning experience for me to be single for more than a month sometime between the ages of 17 and 27. I've learned a lot about myself from being single the majority of the past year, and I don't feel the same way about marriage(or a life partnership) anymore. Sometimes I do feel like I would really love to settle down now and move into a different experience as far as living with someone goes, and I do think I'm ready to do that at the moment, but I don't have a timeline in the back of my head like I did before. It is something I need to continue to work on, however.
• Having kids- I think my thoughts on having kids are healthy, so I don't need to work on that at the moment, but they weren't always like this & I think it's interesting. I grew up thinking, "when I have kids, blahblahblah," because that's just what you do. You grow up, you get married, you have kids-horray! It wasn't until I went to my yoga teacher training that I really thought about why I wanted to have kids. There are so many unhealthy reasons why people have kids: -Because that's what you do, you get married and have kids -Our marriage kinda sucks, so kids will bring us closer together -We're bored -I really need to take care of something so I can feel good about myself -I really hate how that person over there is raising their child and I can do it better -All my friends have kids, and cool stories to tell about them and pictures (they sure are cute!) -I wasn't good at sports but my child will be -I really need to be remembered -It's my responsibility to pass the family genes along -I need someone that will have to love me back, and if they don't at least they're dependent on me -etc. I just find it really interesting that I didn't even question myself until this point was brought up in class. I did start out with the "of course I'll have kids, that's what everyone does" mentality when I was younger and didn't really comprehend what all that entailed. When I figured out what all it entailed, I still didn't consciously question it, which is a great example of how I wasn't aware that how I was raised could have easily dictated whether I had kids or not, without me thinking much about it at all! (don't worry-I'm never getting these stick figure car decals)
• I'm terrified of getting divorced, this comes from a combination of how I was brought up (meaning, you just don't get divorced, once you're married you're married and that's it-which did also effect my fear of settling for someone in a relationship), and then my parents actually getting divorced. One of the things my dad said when he told me he was divorcing my mom was that when he met her he knew that they would get married, she was the one and they would be together for the rest of their lives. I don't really remember the rest of that conversation full of all the "reasons" he was divorcing my mom, because that line really scared me (especially since to me, never hearing my parents fight, he just all the sudden without warning up and left to be with someone else). I've been working on this one for awhile now, and I know it's effected my relationships. I do have a much healthier perspective of marriage/divorce/my parent's situation now and I'm definitely not effected by it now how I was before, but still something to work on.
• How much money I need to make and always having to accomplish something are also good learning experiences for me. I was brought up with the very realistic idea that I needed to make $200,000 per year (that number came from my head sometime in elementary school, not someone else's, but the idea that I needed to make a whole whole lot of money came from my Dad and the culture I was brought up in). I was around money a lot and raised to believe that if you're not accomplishing something (money/success oriented) you were completely lazy and you need to work harder. So, what I did with that was a mixture of following my passions/having fun and trying to make a whole lot of money at the same time, without breaking any of my core values. Therefore, for the past 10 years or so I've been the hardest working least paid person I know, totally burning out my adrenal glands, not taking care of myself. I think part of this is really great. I love the work ethic that I was brought up with, but somehow it didn't work out in a healthy way. I love that I was working really hard and doing things that I loved, but it was really bad to not know what to do with myself if I had an extra hour in the day and I didn't have to eat my food and change my clothes in the car while driving on the way to my next job. I definitely have a perfectionist complex when it comes to work, and at times I've felt really guilty for having an afternoon when I wasn't working. I'm of course working on this (moving to Portland and doing more things for my health and myself have helped a lot) and I think this may be one of the more difficult ones for me to get over...
• I also have a misconception about what I should look like, physically, but I've already addressed that & am working on it.
• My grandparents from both sides of the family are a little racist, not terribly so, and they're getting better at not saying things around the grandchildren along those lines because they know we don't like it. I had a huge fight with them (and a couple of them leading up to the huge one) when I was dating Bryan & I actually think that helped a lot. So, I don't think I'm extremely influenced by that (my parents don't hold the same views as my grandparents, which helped in that not influencing me). I do have some generalizations/misconceptions about certain groups though: I don't like New Jersey, Florida, or Texas very much, when people say they're from one of these states sometimes I'm like "eh." I obviously don't say that out loud and I don't use it against them or refuse to talk to them, sometimes I'll think "wow, this person is pretty cool for being from New Jersey" but it is a thought that goes through my head sometimes. The stereotype for NJ and FL comes from experiences I've had there, and for Texas, just from the super conservative stereotype (which is silly because Austin is extremely liberal). I also get stereotypical thoughts in mind with people who say they're super conservative. I went around saying I was conservative for a little while and people didn't stereotype me, and so I'm a super hypocrite (besides the fact that I'm not educated enough in all the political issues and I get along with most people regardless of what their political standpoint is). I have the generalization that vegans aren't very healthy, but they could actually be eating the food that makes them feel the best, in which case I should be using some of them as healthy examples. There are many more generalizations that I have, and I've been really focusing on trying not to generalize, because it's a really crappy thing to do. Being present is actually one of the best ways I've found to deal with this, because you're always focusing on the person and not up in your head-which is how interactions with people always should be regardless.
• Religious beliefs are a major influence on you when you're growing up. I was brought up Catholic. My spiritual beliefs don't seem to come from Catholicism, however, if I wasn't brought up Catholic, who knows if I would have questioned my beliefs so much and figured out where I stand?
  

I'm sure there are many more things that I'll discover and add to this list in the future. It's impossible to not be influenced by your tribe, and their influence is huge. Looking into what you have to work with is a great learning experience, and really interesting to change (if you want to change parts of it of course) because it changes your life completely.

Living & Working

I think it's pretty much safe to say I've been participating in a huge first chakra re-wiring since I've moved to Portland.

I've always taken things for granted like knowing where the mall is, where I can get a quick healthy meal, & having a place to live, or at least having my mom's place relatively close by so I know if I don't have a place to live all of the sudden I have somewhere to go. Being in a new place with a very different culture and trying to make that work smoothly (with all the other life stuff going on like breaking up with my boyfriend with no support group of friends nearby) is pretty interesting & I've become a much stronger and more grounded person because of it.

I sometimes get this strange feeling of "oh crap, if I die no one will know for two weeks" and "wow, I'm all alone in this place and really all there really is is me, so I better be damn happy with myself cause that's the only person here I truly know, or really anywhere for that matter." It's totally different than being on vacation, which I've done alone a bit. Vacation is a break from life with little worries and responsibilities, but moving and starting your life somewhere completely different is reality and you don't have anything comfortable and safe to go back to.

This may seem like an easy thing for some people to do, people move all the time, however it was huge for me. I'm a very social person with the people I know and I depend on my friend's support a lot. I'm a big believer in that it doesn't really matter where you are, it matters what you do and who you're sharing it with. Moving to Portland without knowing anyone took me way out of my comfort zone and helped me get to know myself a lot better. This was definitely one of the best learning experiences I've had so far and it changed me in a lot of ways. I've gotten used to the fact that everything changes all the time, well, more used to that fact-it's still hard when it does sometimes, but I feel like I'm much better at adapting to change.As far as my living situation goes, I love it. Portland is awesome & is perfect for me at the moment (it's not too big-it has a small town mentality, but it's also a city, it's very liberal, it's very holistic, it has great energy, the weather is awesome, there are beautiful mountains around, the beach is nearby, it's bike friendly & has great public transportation, it's environmentally progressive, it's into local healthy produce stuff and sustainability (if you're going to be anywhere in 2012 when the world starts to end, this is a great place to be), people look you in the eye when they talk to you, it's friendly, there's a great music scene, there's good beer, the plants and trees that grow here are incredible, etc.).

It's really crazy for me to not be able to afford whatever I want to buy right now. I typically don't overspend and I'm pretty good with money management, so I was used to being able to buy whatever I wanted to in Virginia. I was also used to knowing I would get a paycheck & being able to find plenty of private massage clients or picking something else up quickly that would pay me (with my connections to people). I was able to go out to eat everyday, buy lots of gifts for people, pay other people's rent if they couldn't, and fly to Houston for one night if I wanted to the next day. Now I'm trying to figure out how to pay my rent and if I can afford a rain jacket. Needless to say this is all very humbling and gets me to look at my lifestyle and what's important to me, I've made a lot of changes in this aspect and I also think it's good to have an experience when I'm struggling a bit. I've learned to appreciate somethings more and it's interesting because it was always so weird to me when I heard people talking about how they couldn't afford to go out to eat or couldn't afford the gas to go somewhere, now that's not so foreign anymore.


Obviously, at the moment, my work doesn't provide a good foundation for me in this aspect. My job satisfaction and relating to my livelihood would be great if there was work there right now, there just aren't people coming in to get massages, therefore I don't have any work. I'm currently working on remedying this situation. I love giving massages, but there are none to give, and quite honestly I feel like I'm not helping people enough by giving them massages (this second statement I'll address more in a few days with my second chakra stuff).


I put in my notice the other day at Elements, where I was renting a room for massage. I started to really not like the work environment there, I just got a strange energetic feeling from it and although my coworkers were nice, I didn't feel like I fit in there. It was also too far of a drive for someone living in Portland and I wasn't getting business (which may have something to do with not feeling like I fit in there). Quiting jobs is actually way more difficult for me than getting them, I don't like feeling like I let people down and I typically have way too much loyalty to the places I work, even when it's not benefiting me to work there any longer. Although I know it's better for me, of course it's uncomfortable and so it's tough. However, it is an awesome learning experience.


So, still working on the job thing, but it's going in the right direction, and I'm learning a lot-horray!

The black widow is ready to be contained!

Our Black Widow Porter is now ready to be bottled. There are still a few steps left to complete the brewing, but it's almost ready to drink!

Our beer is now giving off one CO2 bubble about every 90 seconds, signifying that the yeast have been happily fermenting the beer and have converted about 99% of the sugar in the mixture into alcohol. They're starting to calm down because there's hardly any sugar left. This means that the beer is safe to put into bottles. If we put the beer into the bottles too soon the yeast will still ferment the beer, which will release CO2 that has no where to go and cause the bottles to explode.

The set up is much less complicated this time, but just as important.First everything has to be sanitized of course. All the cleaning involved makes this a great first chakra exercise. We sanitized all the equipment we needed, the bottles, and boiled the bottle caps to sanitize them as well.

We also prepped the last ingredient we need to add to the beer before it's finished, a little bit of sugar water. This small amount of sugar is added to the beer just before bottling so the yeast can carbonate the beer while it's in the bottle, we won't fill the bottles up too high, to avoid bursting them when this happens.

We started by transferring the beer into a bucket to filter out the left over sediment from the fermentation process. We also put the sugar mixture at the bottom of the tub so the beer mixed evenly with it. To do this we had to get the beer to flow through a siphon from the original container down to the bucket. This is when I got to taste the beer-because you need to create suction first, so the beer can flow up before it goes down into the bucket. Very yummy, I will definitely like this beer!










After racking the beer into the bucket (and leaving behind a bunch of gooey sediment), we lined the beer bottles up into old kitty litter containers to catch any beer that would spill over in the bottling process. We then siphoned the beer from the tub to the bottles, moving very quickly-the beer comes out fast!

Then all we had to do was clean off the bottles, cap them(see my super strong arm muscles!), and label the caps. I personally labeled each cap with a very artistically done cartoon spider, we wouldn't want to mix this beer up with an IPA or some other hoppy beer, how disappointing would that be?
Now it'll only be a week or two before the beer is officially ready to drink. We could drink it now, however it will taste much better once it's carbonated and mellowed out a bit. Oh, and we did test the specific gravity once more, this time getting extremely close to what we were shooting for from the recipe book! Horray, we are awesome brew masters!

Your body is what you use to do everything you do

Therefore, when looking at your first chakra, which deals with your physical body more than any of the other chakras, you need to look at how you're treating your body. Your energetic system needs your body in order to function, just like you need your brain in order to have thoughts. If you're not physically here, it's hard for you to get things done, and if you're functioning without being present in your body, you'll still get things done, but it's a lot harder to do so.

Yoga is an excellent way to energetically tone your body (it's also a great way to build strength, flexibility, balance, and mind/body connection). The traditional yoga asanas (or poses) were created by monks as a way to prepare the body for mediation. Each asana directs the energy flow of your body in different ways, balancing out the chakras, strengthening them, removing energetic blockages, toning your chakras and your body so that energy flows most efficiently through you. Regular yoga practice using various asanas is beneficial on many levels (I recommend looking at this link). If you ever feel like you're out of your body, go to a yoga class or practice a pose or two on your own. A few of the many yoga asanas that are particularly good for the first chakra and grounding:

• Padmasana-Lotus Pose
• Tadasana- Mountain Pose
• Baddha Konasana-Bound Angle
  
• Utkatasana- Chair Pose
• Virabhadasana 1,2,3- Warrior 1, Warrior 2, and Warrior 3
• Any Balancing pose (Vrikshasana-Tree, Garudasana-Eagle, Ardha Chandrasana-Half Moon, etc.)
• Bikram Yoga Series
  

What you eat and how you eat effects how well you function. I know this sounds like a silly thing to mention, but so many people don't realize that what they eat is actually effecting their health. The cells in your body need nutrients to function, the only way they get those nutrients is from what you feed them, and they then go about fueling your body and creating new cells with whatever it is that you gave them. Therefore, paying attention to what you eat is very important.

I'm not going to go into nutrition at this moment, but basically, try to avoid processed items, eat mostly vegetables, meat, and whole grains. Eat a variety of foods. This is something I'm working on this month, I tend to eat the foods that make me feel good (which is a great thing to do), but then I tend to only eat them and not a variety of other foods that might possibly make me feel good too but I just don't know about it yet. I've also gotten to the point where most of the time I eat I'm doing so just to eat, not for the taste of the food but because I need to eat. I still do like eating, but sometimes I get a little bored with it and it should be more enjoyable.

I love Thai Curry, it's something I eat because it tastes good. So, I learned how to make traditional Thai food at home. Instead of going to the store and picking up pre-made curry paste, we picked up the seeds needed to make the curry powder, added ginger and garlic and made a lovely curry paste. Because we were making it at home I could add as much or as little (as little in my case) of the chilies, making it the perfect level of spiciness for my taste. Making the curry was much more involved than this, making it a wonderful first chakra task, breaking up the process into it's elemental pieces from the beginning (opposed to getting a plate of food at a restaurant or using pre-made curry sauce, powder, or paste).
My favorite website for recipes is www.epicurious.com, and of course some of the gluten-free cooking websites that are out there.

It's also a good idea to make sure you're eating enough calories during the day. Sometimes when I get really busy I forget to make time to eat & I'll just eat a number of little snacks through the day to get me through. It's important to make sure you give yourself enough calories or your body will go into starvation mode and not be able to give you the energy you need to function, not to mention it'll start storing whatever food you do eat as fat and reserve it because it thinks you are starving (then it goes about eating your muscle tissue for energy). Also, if you're not eating enough protein you may not have enough energy. This website is great for letting you know if you're eating enough calories and what percentage of your calories are coming from proteins, carbs, and fats. I discovered a lot about my eating habits when I actually kept track of them for a short time.

Grounding Foods for your First Chakra

• Meat
• Protein
• Root Vegetables
• Nuts
• Whole Grains
• Herbal Teas such as Pau d' Arco, Rooibos, Hibiscus, Raspberry Leaf, Uva Ursi

Many Yogis are vegetarians, this is the traditional yogi diet. Meat grounds you and "weighs you down," therefore if you practice yoga on a regular basis (way more than me), you may want to limit your intake of very grounding foods in order to send your energy to other chakras in your body. However, if you are a yogi, practicing yoga on a strict regular basis, you also have an extremely grounded first chakra, meditation routine, and sense of presence, so that you can focus on other chakras now. You're still doing grounding things, such as mediation and yoga, you just don't need food to be part of your grounding routine. I personally am not to this point yet, and I really love my grounding foods, also the other activities I'm currently doing (like weight training, climbing, etc.) require me to have a higher protein intake than I would if I wasn't doing these activities. Always adjust your food intake to what your personal needs are.

Exercise- everyone should do this. The key to good exercise is to do a variety of things. First off you don't want to get bored with the exercise you're doing, and also if you only do one type of exercise you just become good at that one thing. Your body gets used to the movements you make to perform that activity and then your muscles just aren't challenged anymore-they stop growing. There are tons of bikers in Portland, lots of them bike to work everyday, however, some of them still aren't in great shape because they don't do anything else, they haven't become physically fit, they've just become awesome bikers. (This is something I'm working on at the moment as well, I do like to do the same things when I exercise, but I'm changing them up more and more now.)

Listen to your body-eat when you're hungry, rest when you're tired, don't try and do an insane amount of massages when your hands start to hurt.

Get enough sleep, sleeping is when your body repairs itself. I would go into this more, but right now I need to sleep...listen to your body...